karl_nj

They usually have a few Sauvignon Blanc's available. Kim Crawford is usually available, and there is usually a Robert Mondavi from California. Sometimes there is also a less expensive Chilean one. But if you have the drink package you might as well go out of our comfort zone and try whatever is available. If you hate it you can try something else.

RCL generally refers to a miami vice as a lava flow, i don't think they actually will make a true lava flow. Usually a miami vice is half frozen pina colada and half frozen strawberry daiquiri, whereas a lava flow is a pina colada with liquid strawberry swirled in. In the end it doesn't really matter, both are tasty and vacation-type drinks.

We are usually sailing with our children, so we pick early dining. My wife and I did go on one cruise w/o them, so we went with the late seating.

Ah, that is unfortunate. I was hoping it would just need to be applied to a cruise by then, not depart by then. Because of the BOGO nonsense, according to royal my mother paid much more for our last cruise then my son. So her FCC is for much more then him. In reality, I split the cost 50/50 with her. And she is not going on our April cruise, so we can’t use it there. She is traveling elsewhere that week. And we were planning on a land trip to Paris for next summer. Not a cruise. I guess we may just end up losing the credit.

Ever find out what the mysterious $90 charge was for? You booked directly with Celebrity?

Yes, but from what I've read, even with the limited number of passes, as the day goes on the lines for the slides get worse. So however many passes they sell, it still might be "too many". That's my concern, at least. For this sailing, only 4 of us. And they just updated the price for the water park again, right now its down to $75. So $300 for 4, so the net price of the cabana would be $700. Yeah, i've only done bungalows so far. We did one at Coco Cay (pre perfect day) and we just did one at Labadee. Quite nice, and a more reasonable price I think that is part of my hesitation around going with a cabana at perfect day. Sounds great though, even better than the service at DCL's Castaway Cay Cabanas. Interesting. I guess that makes sense, where you might have 2 ships that day. At Labadee for the bungalows, they just let me pick whatever I wanted. We were the first ones there, so they were all available. I picked the one at the end. Yeah, I figured I'd get my towels the night before and have our bag packed and be sunscreen and ready go as soon as the captain gives the go ahead. So this was a really good point you brought up. I was getting the arrival/departure times from that cruisett website. I figured I should go to the source and look at the Royal Carribean website, and see what the times looked like there. So I did, and I am feeling *way* better about the situation. Matt recently posted about how Navigator (and some other ship) are doing Coco Cay "double dips" where they stop at the island twice. Guess what -- now, according to the Royal Carribean website, that sailing Navigator is not arriving at Coco Cay on Wed April 8, but on Tues the 7th and Thu the 9th. cruisett must be out of date. So now i'm not sure if any other ship will be at Coco Cay that day. It might just be Anthem. Not sure the best way to know for sure though, other then looking at every possible sailing in April. Good point, that should spread out people a bit more too. Yup, it's the old standard NY/NJ 7 night to Cape Canaveral, Nassau, Private Island that all the cruise lines have been doing forever. I'm sure there will be some NCL ship that will be doing the same itinerary, the same week. I do want to check out Atlantis one of these days, but I figure that Atlantis might also be a zoo since it's the week before Easter. So if there is truly only one ship at Coco Cay, that might turn out to be my best bet. Thanks for your detailed response, it's been very helpful. Gives me some more things to ponder.

Thanks for the info -- yeah, that is what I was worried about. I figured that if I could get an early start... what the disney folks would call a "rope drop", then we would be able to hit a bunch of slides at first, then do the wave pool, and eventually abandon the water park area completely. But if it's already a mob scene when I get there, then i'm not sure that would work.

In April, I will be sailing on Anthem of the Seas. We arrive at Coco cay at 9:30am, so I figured the earliest I can get off the ship will be 10am. From what I've read, "rope dropping" the Coco Cay water park is a great strategy. Unfortunatley, according to Cruise TT, that day Navigator will also be in Coco Cay. They leave at the same time (5pm), but they arrive earlier, at 7am. Even if I'm the first person off the ship, I figure everyone that buys Water Park admission on Navigator will already be on line for all the water slides. Should I just skip paying $79/person for the water park, since the lines for the water slides may already be crazy at that point? Do you think the rest of Coco Cay is also going to be crazy with 8015 people there? Is it going to be a pain to find a chair near the pool? Just trying to set my expectations. Not sure I want to pay $1k for a cabana.

It's easy to find very similar anti RCL items on that lawyers website too: https://www.cruiselawnews.com/2016/02/articles/rough-weather/anthem-of-the-seas-lawsuits-royal-caribbean-recklessly-sailed-into-storm/ https://www.cruiselawnews.com/2016/02/articles/rough-weather/is-the-anthem-of-seas-more-unseaworthy-than-it-looks/ https://www.cruiselawnews.com/2019/07/articles/rape/appellate-court-royal-caribbean-knew-of-serious-problem-of-crime-including-rape-on-its-cruise-ships/ https://www.cruiselawnews.com/2019/01/articles/public-relations/no-ac-minimal-obc-anthem-seas-leaves-passengers-hot/

Yes. They won’t remove a photo from the package with you in it just because, say, ‘grandma’ is also in the photo. But a photo of just ‘grandma’ wouldn’t be in your package, if she isn’t in your room.

I hope Hurricane Dorian decides to start moving again soon and just goes out to sea ASAP. What a crazy storm!

Yes, like most sailings out of US ports that are 7+ nights, they have lobster on the 2nd formal night. Which is usually night 6. Since Chops is in Central Park on Deck 8, and the MDR Kitchen is... not entirely sure, but I assume on Deck 3 or Deck 4, they might not be able to find you a MDR lobster tail. It's a big ship! Personally, that night I just went to the MDR ordered the Beef Tenderloin and mentioned that I would be thrilled if a lobster tail happened to also land on my plate. Happy to report that I ended up with two lobster tails on my plate, along with my Beef Tenderloin...

Just wanted to write down a few thoughts about our recent cruise to the Eastern Caribbean on Symphony of the Seas. There were 5 of us on this sailing, my wife and I, my kids (14 year old son and 10 year old daughter) and my Mother. We had two connecting cabins. This was our first sailing on an Oasis class ship. We booked a Boardwalk balcony cabin, since it’s unique to this ship class. I’m glad we did, but if I sail on an Oasis class ship again I think I will look for an ocean view balcony cabin, more towards the bow. The noise from Hiro and movies in the evenings was very loud in our cabin, and I missed seeing the ocean. It’s almost doesn’t feel like you are on a cruise ship when you are on an Oasis class ship. Door between connecting cabins is better on Anthem compared to Symphony. On Symphony it doesn’t fold back all the way and is held open by the door closer locking. If you accidentally touch it, it will close. From what I recall, Anthem was held open by a magnet and was flush against the wall. Still, I’m glad connecting cabins are available. It’s not an option at all on Radiance class ships. Finding good beer on Royal continues to be an issue, even on the bigger ships. They lost the wrench they needed to change the Ballast Point Grapefruit Sculpin key in Playmakers, and they were out of a bunch of their more interesting can/bottle beers, even on Day 2. Solarium was loud and crowded on the first two sea days, it was (slightly) quieter and (slightly) calmer out on the pool area where the kids where. But that was also a crowded mess. The pools looked almost as crowded as they do on DCL. Almost, but not quite. On DCL I think they only fill the family pools up halfway, the rest of the volume is taken up by all the kids in the pool. Chair hogs/seat saving was out in full force everywhere (as usual). There were many large groups onboard, so two or three people were saving entire rows. On the bright side, at least for the shows, their family members generally did all show up eventually. I find it particularly annoying when people save seats for people that never come. Our itinerary had to be changed because of the hurricane. Because of the change, we had beautiful weather in all of our ports. Instead of St Maarten on day 3, they moved up San Juan from Day 4 to Day 3. Then we went to Labadee on Day 4 instead of day 5. Day 5 was a sea day instead of a Port Day. Day 6 was a Port Day instead of a Sea Day. At first we were supposed to be re-routed to Coco Cay, which would have been amazing. I was looking forward to comparing the newly updated Coco Cay with Labadee. But because of the hurricane, Coco Cay had to be evacuated, so we instead went to Nassau. And our full day at Nassau was eventually shortened, because of concerns about the Port of Miami closing because of the hurricane, so all aboard time was 1:30 instead of 4:30. We made the best of things, and we were able to have a quick visit to Pirate Republic brewery in Nassau for some flights of beer, after we went Laser Tag on the ship. I had booked Laser Tag for the sea day, but it turned into a port day because of the hurricane. We probably would have skipped it if we had visited coco cay, but i’m glad we didn’t -- we all had a great time doing laser tag. Well, my mother skipped it, but the rest of our participated. Even my wife enjoyed it, and she was a bit skeptical going in. I managed to get 2nd place on my team, which I thought was pretty good for an overweight 45 year old. This was our first visit to Labadee, and everyone had a wonderful time. We booked a bungalow. I enjoyed having the bungalow on Labadee even more than the one we had on Coco Cay 16 months ago. I preferred being able to walk to the buffet for food, instead of getting the box lunch delivered. I felt the cabana attendants were much more attentive and faster. The beach in front of the bungalows was also better at Labadee vs Coco Cay. When I did the pre-check-in at the information desk near the ship, we were directed to the tram, but one of the golf cart guys ended up taking us off the tram and taking us to our bungalow, which was very nice. The cabana attendants were also able to call us a golf cart driver for the trip back to the ship. This was a nice surprise, as I wasn’t expecting this service. We had the photo package, so I was always on the lookout for photo opportunities. One of the ships photographers was in the water at Columbus Cove, taking photos, so I was able to get a few photos of myself and the kids swimming, with our ship in the background. It reminded me of the time when I was at one of the Disney waterparks, and a photographer was stationed in the lazy river. Three sea days meant three opportunities for the Tutti Salad station for lunch in the MDR. I’ve been disappointed recently with this on other ships, as I have noticed fewer options available. I’ve never seen chicken available on Anthem, just shrimp. And on one our our Anthem cruises, they even left the tails on the shrimp -- I had to try to pick shrimp tails out of my salad. Well, on Symphony the Tutti Salad bar lived up to its name, and did have everything available. They even had steak available for your salad, not just chicken. My wife and I were quite pleased. One of the waiters running the salad station was Eric, who was our waiter on Anthem 16 months ago, so it was nice to be able to say hi to him again. We had early seating in the main dining room, and our waiter and assistant waiter took great care of us. We ate dinner there every day except for the first night. We somehow ended up with a complimentary specialty restaurant meal, so we ate at 150 Central Park the first night. I had the lamb wellington, which was quite nice. I also enjoyed the fried cheesecake for dessert. There were several young kids there crying, which was mildly annoying. At least they weren’t that close to our table. I would have been more annoyed if I was paying for the meal. On DCL I like that the specialty restaurants are adult-only restaurants. Overall we had a wonderful cruise. It was fun to finally experience an Oasis class ship. It’s not my favorite class of ship, but I could certainly see myself sailing on one again in the future. I prefer ships that have public spaces with windows that let you see the ocean. I’ll book an ocean view balcony next time, which I think will help. The ship certainly had some great entertainment available, which I think is the big advantage to the larger ships. We all enjoyed Hairspray much more than we expected, and Hiro was also lots of fun. But sometimes I wonder how they come up with some of the things they include in the shows. I imagine Nick Weir in a conference room with a bunch of other RCL executives. When they were planning “The Gift” on Anthem, someone asks “What do kids like these days?” Someone says that their son saw some kid on YouTube jumping ramps on a BMX bike, and now keeps asking for one for Christmas. Nick Weir then declares, well we need to add a BMX bike trick scene in The Gift. For Hiro, someone mentions their kid had their birthday party at a trampoline park -- Nick Weir then declares, Hiro must include a trampoline segment, since that’s what the kids are into these days… ? RCL also ended up giving everyone a FCC of 1/7th of the cruise fare, to make up for not going to Coco Cay, which I thought was very nice. They certainly didn’t need to do that. I think I'll be able to do put my immediate families credit towards our already booked cruise on Anthem next April, but my mother isn’t coming with us on that trip. So in order to use up her credit, I guess I'll need to look into booking all of us another cruise on Royal Carribean soon…

Hmm -- what if you don't prepay your auto grats, and you use the OBC for that? Is there anything in the fine print that says you can't use it for the auto gratuity?

Thanks, I guess I mixed up Citi and Chase. The coverage Chase has is actually pretty good if you have, say, a high deductible health plan that does cover you when you are out of the country.

I don't believe Chase has any health coverage. It does have Trip Cancellation/Interruption, lost luggage, etc. My understating is it would cover up to what you charge on the card. Citi had health coverage, but they just got rid of all of their credit card insurance benefits. Amex Cruise Privileges Program requires the entire cruise to be paid for with an Amex card.

Chase Sapphire Reserve has travel insurance that is more limited then a separate travel insurance policy, but I find it's OK in some circumstances (e.g. if I'm not flying to the port). Amex Platinum doesn't have any travel insurance benefits. So if you have both cards, then you may need to also add in the cost of a separate travel insurance policy. Something to factor in when "doing the math" to figure out what is best for a specific booking. I've had much more luck using the Amex Cruise Privileges Program for my bookings on Cunard, compared to my bookings on Royal.

Just wanted to add some "lessons learned" to the thread, in case anyone uses the search function in the near future. We ended up going down to "The Attic" (comedy club) to get help booking laser tag. They were also helping people book everything else, like the shows or the escape room. The person helping us wasn't very good and didn't seem to really know what she was doing, so it took a while. At first she tried booking the escape room and not laser tag. I had checked the app when I boarded, but I wasn't able to book it myself. After learning more about the app, I should have instead done the following: connected to ship wifi went to Daily Planner, select filter "Show All" hit the "refresh" button to update all of the events find laser Tag: Battle for Planet Z and find the day/time I wanted hit Reserve Now and booked it I'm not 100% sure this will work on day 1, since I wasn't able to try it, but I think it should. If you are not connected to ship wifi, then Reserve Now is greyed out. If you are connected to ship wifi, then you connect to the app server on the ship. This is the most up-to-date server. If you book anything onboard, then only the server on the ship appears to be updated. Pre-cruise, or if you are onboard and not connected to ship wifi, then you connect to a land side server, which only has things that you have booked before the cruise. Generally on day 1 I don't connect to ship wifi, since we are in port in the US, so this caused a bit of confusion. In addition, it seems that each cabin needs to book laser tag independently. Not sure why, but this was also a limitation that staff had when they booked it from their tablets. So if you have two rooms, it would be best to have two phones available, with logins for one person in each cabin. This also caused a bit of confusion for me. When I checked my app, I only saw my wife and I booked for laser tag, not my kids. For all other shows and events, i could see that everyone was booked. Then I checked the app on my mothers phone, but she was not on ship wifi yet, so it looked like my kids were not booked for laser tag. But once I logged into the ship wifi, then I could see the booking.

For disembarkation, with the facial scanning technology, it seemed that they were only using it for US citizens with passports. Non citizens and citizens using a birth certificate went to a different line. I'm not sure what happened there, but I assume you met with a customs/immigration officer. I was amazed how quickly I got off the ship and to the airport. I had luggage tag 8, they called my tag earlier then expected (since we got to the port at 2:30am due to the hurricane) and didn't run into any lines from that point forward until I boarded my plane. Not at immigration, not at the taxi stand, not dropping off my bags at the airport, and not at the TSA Pre Check lane. Embarkation was also as quick and easy, except for all the traffic getting to the terminal. Once I got out of my uber, there were pretty much no lines. I had to wait a few minutes after the xray machines to show documentation that I had two cabins (for our 4 bottles of wine), but then we boarded immediately. It must have been a little after 10:30am when we got onboard.

Ah yeah, forgot about that -- there is also a 2nd tab labeled 'Drinks' where you can select Coke, Diet Coke, or Evian Water. I think it's likely that these aren't covered by the drink package either. I ended up with an "included" soda package on my sailing (due to booking a Broadwalk Balcony), but there looked to still be a charge to get a coke.

I disembarked from Symphony this morning, didn't need to show my passport on either embarkation or disembarkation. Was very surprised. They did ask to see my mothers passport for embarkation, not sure if it was because i messed something up when I did online check-in for her, or if it was some sort of random check. For disembarkation, Customs/Immigration used the facial recognition system.

Disembarked from Symphony this AM. They were testing food delivery via the app to a subset of locations on the pool decks, or your cabin. For this test you could pick two burgers or the chili dog from Johnny Rockets, The Nigiri Combo or the Salmon Roll from Izumi, a cheese or pepperoni pizza from Sorrento's, or the chicken fingers and fries from Playmakers. Each item had an individual charge, and there was also a delivery fee. Only certain areas of the pool deck were eligible. For example, you could not get food delivered to the Solarium. I considered trying it, but never got around to it. I got a pre-cruise survey via email, and I guess I answered the questions correctly because they asked me if I was willing to meet with them to discuss this app functionality during the cruise. Three guys from shore side were onboard and basically asked questions about the usability of the app for a half hour. Personally I'd prefer if the figured out how to get the chat app rolled out fleetwide, but I'm glad that they are trying new things.

Disembarked from Symphony this morning. They changed the itinerary to keep us away from any adverse weather. So if I were to post photos, it would be very boring. Calm seas and sunny sky. If I’m traveling during hurricane season in the Caribbean, I want to be on a cruise ship instead of a land vacation. We may not go where we planned, but it’s likely we will go somewhere where the weather is pleasant.

I would think the line would be shorter the morning of the 2nd day. The line is often crazy on day one. If you walk by after/before dinner on day 1 you might have a short wait.

Basic drinks usually run a bit under the $13 price point. I would estimate $9 to $11. The menus like to promote the $13 drinks, but not everything costs that much. Drink of of the day is $8.